The paper presents a study of a mobile multi-robot formation (MRF) control problem. The robots are nonholonomic car-like vehicles and perform their mission while coordinating the formation shape when needed. The MRF control problem consists then of tracking reshaping a formation. Control design is based upon the centralized strategy assuming that information from a leader robot can be distributed to formation members. The main motivations for the work are that control strategies designed for single robots when applied to formations become complex and grow in terms of computational time, many of new control algorithms are dedicated to different formation coordination schemes and many of them were never verified experimentally. Two control levels are considered, i.e. kinematics and dynamics. Kinematics controllers applied are the input-output linearization and the Samson algorithm. They are simple in implementation and proved good performance in controlling single car-like robots. We examine them with regard to their potential applications for MRF. The dynamics controllers are based upon the generalized programmed motion equations method used successfully for a leader-follower control strategy for a fixed shape formation. Results of simulation studies, comparisons and discussions of implemented control algorithms are presented.
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